Saturday, December 27, 2014

Malaysia is number 1 for mobile Internet access

This would give you an indication of mobile device usage in this country.

A study conducted by TNS which includes more than 150,000 interviews across 56 countries on consumers' online behaviour shows that Malaysia is 1 out of only 5 places in the world where smartphone usage has outstripped computers.

The 5 countries where smartphone usage has outstripped computers are:

The study found that in Malaysia, 35% of the users surveyed said that they exclusively use their smartphones and no other device to access the Internet, making Malaysia the #1 country in the world when it comes to smartphone Internet access exclusivity.

The same high smartphone adoption pattern stretched across the rest of the Asia Pacific region with many of the countries above the 50% adoption mark. Even countries that traditionally have lagged behind have registered significant growth like Vietnam at 36%, up 16 percent from 2013.

Apart from Malaysia, the only smartphone-only Internet access was true for other Asian countries:

Vietnam: 24%
Singapore: 16%
South Korea: 14%
Hong Kong: 14%

In the Western world this trend is a single-digit one, e.g. Germany is at 7%, and the UK at 6%.

Search engines

Using search engines on smartphones is ubiquitous. 72% of Malaysians do this at least once a month, and the figures are even higher in the rest of Asia - Singapore: 88%, Vietnam: 92%, Korea: 99%, Japan: 91%. This is a global trend with the UK, France and Germany all reporting figures of 88%.

On internet penetration

Malaysians have at least 1.2 Internet-enabled devices, which underlines the importance of the multi-screen trend: using more than one device to achieve a task, or using devices simultaneously.

"This research clearly shows that Asian consumers have taken charge of the internet, and are shaping it in their own image - Malaysians are at the forefront of this trend, using their mobile devices to access news, look for local businesses and watch videos." - Sajith Sivanandan, MD, Google Malaysia.